For those embarking on ridding meat and animal products from your diet be sure to do your research. You really need a wide variety and balance to attain, especially, the protein power of meat. Like anything you'll get out of it what you put into it. But I see way too many folks, especially younger people, embarking on being vegan without having a clue what their body truly needs with respect to varietal input.
There is no protein power of meat as far as energy goes. That is NOT the fuel source for the human body. Glucose is. Where do you get protein? First, think about where it comes from. Think about animals that don't eat meat - where do they get it? Look at horses - they can outrun you and kill you instantly if you get behind one of their legs. The key is an understanding of amino acids and their usage in forming proteins. The issue with animal products is three-fold.
1) It is a decaying product that starts the process from the instant the animal is killed. Think about the waste products that were held up in the cells and interstitial fluids at the time of death. You're eating THAT, raw or cooked. The reason meat stays red is sodium nitrite. It reduces the rate of botulinal toxin development. It would be a dead color if sodium nitrite was not applied to meat.
2) Cooking it causes certain amino acids that are heat-sensitive to form bonds with one another that cannot be broken apart during digestion, leading to things floating around in your body that has to be treated as waste by-products.
3) Energy conservation. You have higher energy levels on a vegan dietary primarily because you do not have to break down the proteins of animals, which are a completely constructed item, all the way down to amino acids, assuming you eat it raw, and THEN start to build up protein from it into human protein. You expend energy trying to break it down before you can use it, and you do not get energy from it. Instead, you get the addictive rush from eating a steak.
The main source for protein is a vegan dietary consisting mostly of fruit, some veggies, and limited amounts of nuts and seeds. The reason it is is because these things don't require anywhere near the digestion that animal products require.
There is nothing balanced about what you are suggesting. I'm sorry to say that. You're caught in the Pleasure Trap, it looks like. Trust me, it is a !@#$% getting out of. I don't even know if I'm entirely out of it...
If you want a very thorough education on health, this is THE place to go. I read this entire thing as a student in school, back in the day when it existed only in several books going over 1,000 pages.
http://www.rawfoodexplained.com/sitemap.html - since this thing is HUGE, just go ahead and scroll through there, looking for specific topics that interest you for now.
I'm not trying to be the person who is right about everything, but help you avoid the common mistakes that people make in transitioning to different dietaries. Even cooked vegan dietaries are not healthy in the long run because of the salts and cooking/salad oils involved. I found out the hard way that you must follow the Low Fat Raw Vegan path, and you must have good quality food to make it work. Think about how disappointed I was... No more chinese takeout. No more italian food (presents incompatible combination of grains and tomatoes), no more mexican (high fat, and incompatible combination of corn and beans, or beans and rice). It sucks wind because once you open that Pandora's Box of civilized eating, there's pretty much no going back. I know. I've tried for 17 years, validating what I have just written here.
Damn society for springing a life-destroying addiction on us before we are old enough and educated enough to realize what it is we're doing when we take that first bite. But life is what it is. You have to keep going and live the best you can.
